#The First Joke of Christmas
Riding the favourite at Cheltenham, the jockey was well head of the field. Suddenly he was hit on the head by a turkey and a string of sausages.
He managed to keep control of his mount and pulled back into the lead,
only to be struck by a box of Christmas crackers and a dozen mince pies as he went over the last fence.
With great skill he managed to steer the horse to the front of the field
once more when, on the run in, he was struck on the head by a bottle of
sherry and a Christmas pudding.
Thus distracted, he succeeded in coming only second. He immediately went
to the stewards to complain that he had been seriously hampered.
[Add a comment]
# The Doctor smiled awkwardly.
There's only one thing for it I'm afraid, he said. Perhaps you should sit down
Is it that serious? My voice sounded hollow.
I'm afraid it is. You're going to need a turd transplant.
peteychap said Jez, my crap is yours. I owe you that much.
Pete [added 28th Nov 2000]
[Add a comment]
#Stoned!
Hello, it's Mr Ryan, your urologist, here he began. I didn't know I had a urologist.
You didn't know you had a urologist, did you? he continued cheerily.
He went on to describe how, after a more thorough review of my x-rays he thinks that it looks like I did recently pass a kidney stone ... things look a bit dilated ... and that there's another small ... three millimetres ... stone in my left kidney.
If it were larger we'd probably have to do something about it. So if it moves I just have to put up with the excrutiating pain, I wondered.
You'd be jolly unlucky if this one came down too. We'll just keep an eye on it, and maybe run some chemistry.
We made a date for May - no need to rush - and he rang off.
It's been a pleasure. I'll get my secretary to write a you a letter. Goodbye!
[Add a comment]
#Scientists report alien life
Scientists in Wales said they discovered what may be a tiny form of primitive alien life that a passing comet may have dropped into Earth's atmosphere, London's Daily Mail newspaper reported today.
Blimey! The chap making this claim, Chandra Wickramasinghe, worked with Fred Hoyle (once Astronomer Royal I believe) and together they developed the idea that life on Earth may have been carried here or seeded by comets or asteroids. Stated as baldly as that it all sounds pretty bonkers - at a lecture I attended, Hoyle himself said "I didn't believe this and went out to find the evidence, I found the evidence and it lead me to this conclusion". The way he explained his theories and how they had developed over the course of his career, the evidence seemed pretty good. For instance,
- Based on the particle density of the interstellar medium, no particle of which we are aware can give the observed refractive index other than dessicated bacteria.
- Later moon missions recovered equipment from the lunar surface left by the original Apollo mission, including the famous Leica camera. On subsequent examination, this camera was found to be hosting a bacterial colony. A flourishing bacteria colony. A colony which had survived nearly two years in a extreme vacuum, harsh radiation, extreme temperature (both high and low) environment entirely unlike that of Earth.
- Whereever we look on Earth we find bacterial life, even when we least expect it. Until very recently underwater volcanos were thought to be devoid of life, but they are actually teeming with sulphur-digesting bacteria which survive without oxygen or light in water which can go from 4 Celsius to being superheated and back. Lakes below the ice in Siberia appear to have unique bacterial colonies.
There was much more, but that's what I remember. I hope that Prof Wickramasinghe paper is given proper consideration.
[Add a comment]
# I seem to be surrounded by motor accidents at the moment. A couple of weeks ago I saw an articulated lorry collide ever so gently with a car on the M1. This afternoon I saw a car turning right across two lanes of traffic get hit by an commuter anxious to get home. And last night I skidded into the back of a VW Polo.
All the excitement happened here. As my soon-to-be victim and I rounded the bend to the right, we're forced to swerve (swerve implies we were going quickly - we weren't, only about 25 mph) to the left by an oncoming car straddling the middle of the road. This car is also blocking our view of a large patch of water on the road. The guy in front of me sees it first obviously, and stops suddenly. I brake too, but because I've been forced over onto a slick of accumulated wet leaf-shit, I skid into the back of him. The car in the middle of the road, and the four cars behind him, drive away. Bastards.
Anyway, we were both uninjured. His car was remarkably undamaged, so after we'd swapped phone numbers he carried on. I shifted my car as far out of the way as I could, by backing it up onto the patch of wet leaf-shit, and walked the rest of the way to MAC to see Requiem For A Dream. Jolly good it was too.
I went back to collect the car today, but it was more damaged than I had originally thought. I broke both the headlights - one which hit the other car and the other where the front had squashed over sideways. Some of the wing has folded under (not much - most of the front seems to be made of plastic) and would have rubbed against the wheel if I'd tried to negotiate left hand corners more sharply curved than a straightish banana. I had thought the engine wasn't damaged too, but the I could see the radiator was bashed up, and probably other things I couldn't see. I left it there, forlornly, for the body-shop bloke to pick up at his leisure.
[Add a comment]
# The BBC website has slowly grown into one of the best around. Here's
a corker from the new
Today programme section.
[Add a comment]
# Had Pokemon pasta shapes for my tea this evening. Thought about leaving some on the window ledge to see if they evolve, but suspect they would probably do the opposite.
[Add a comment]
# Congratulations to
The Guardian sports writers who
correctly predicted that Andre Watson, the referee for Saturday's England vs Australia Rugby Union Test match, would refer
the winning score to the video ref.
[Add a comment]
# According to his latest measurements the
little bloke is taking after Nat's side of the family, as he's in the upper 75th percentile for weight but below the 50th percentile for height. If this keeps up, I've decided to battle nature by nuturing him tall.
I'm going to turn all the doors upside down, so that the handles are higher up, put all the furniture on bricks, and start keeping his toys on a high shelf. When he has his tea, it'll be on a table which is at nose-height when he's sitting down so he has to reach up for it. We'll go out a lot and look at aeroplanes, big trees, kites and birds in flight. All this will focus his attention upwards and thus encourage him to grow taller.
[Add a comment]
# Daniel failed his hearing test yesterday, apparently because it wasn't interesting enough. The canononical way to tests an infant's hearing is as follows
- sit infant on mother's knee, facing outwards
- health visitor (A) sits facing the infant
- another health visitor (B) sneaks around behind the mother
- 'hidden' health visitor B makes a series of noises using something that looks a bit like a football rattle
- health visitor A observes infant's reactions
To pass the test the infant must look round, to seek out the source of the noise.
During the less-loud noises, he decided they weren't interesting enough to look around for and started shouting and making his own noise. Health visitor A admitted that she saw him react, but because he didn't look right round, she had to fail him. Hmmm. Given that he spends all day with busses rumbling past in the background, it's hardly surprizing he doesn't jump out of his skin to every little sound, but Nat has to take him back next week to go through the whole charade again.jayne [e] [w] said daiel failed because he can not hear well. My childeren got their hearing tests done and they were terrible! but you dont see me complaining do you?
[added 2nd Jul 2005] No, he failed because he wasn't interested. The next week, he was tested again and passed. In the nearly five years since, I have had no reason to doubt his hearing.
I strongly suspect that if a child did have a hearing problem, the parents would be suspicious long before a test like this. [added 3rd Jul 2005]
[Add a comment]
# Just back for having my innards x-rayed half a dozen times. I'm stone free, by the looks of things.
The x-rays look pretty keen - there's your spine and your pelvis in there obviously, and because you've been given an iodine injection all the little tubey bits inside your kidneys show up together with the tubes down to your bladder.
[Add a comment]
# What would
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire be called in Italy?
[Add a comment]
#And the new President of the US is ...
Life mirrors
The Onion again.
[Add a comment]
# Well, blimey.
The UK Patent Office is
soliciting "business, commerce
and consumer" opinion on the subject of software patents.
[Add a comment]
# The
little chap's
got a touch of conjunctivitus at the moment, so Nat wheeled him down to
the Doc's to have him looked at.
Whoever decided that prescribing eye drops for babies was a good idea
obviously had no children of their own, nor did they know anyone with
children, nor did they ever see children on the television, nor read
about them in books.
He's not stupid, so only half way through the first day of "one drop per
eye, four times a day" he was screwing his eyes shut, sticking his hands
in the way, and bawling as soon as he saw the bottle. We've been reduced
to wrapping him in a towel like you do when you've got to give a pill to
your cat, and even then it takes the two of us to get his eyes open long
enough to try and get the drops in.
I can see him years from now, lying on a psychiatrist's couch, working
through the life-long trauma of being given eyedrops at 8 months.
[Add a comment]
# I've rambled on about software patents and how foolish they are several times. The US patent office's somewhat laissez-faire attitude to "invention" and propensity to hand out patents like sweets isn't just confined to software. There have been a number of dubious gene patents awarded too, some of which are probably harmless and others are definately quite dangerous.
Here's one. Ricetec's Basmati rice lines and grains claims Basmati rice as an "invention". It states
The novel rice lines of the invention may be produced by classical plant breeding using basmati and semi-dwarf, long grain parents that have the desired grain and plant traits, respectively, and using selection schemes comprising the novel method for screening of the cooked grain texture trait.
Selective breeding to establish desired traits - Wow, how new! Furthermore
The various embodiments of the claimed invention described herein are by the way of illustration and are not meant to limit the invention.
This is pretty good. It says that the patent isn't just confined to the particular variety it describes, but
all varieties produced by hybridising Basmati and long-grain rices.
This particular patent is being challenged by the Indian Government, (which ActionAid is supporting) but represents a worrying trend towards granting patents on staple food crops. Companies have been awarded patents in the US and Japan covering rice, sorghum, cassava, sweet potato, maize, potatoes, wheat and millet, as well as cocoa (two US patents granted to Mars UK) and the use of traditional plants as medicines (like these covering turmeric [1|2|3]). These patents directly threaten many communities ability to control their own food supplies and places potential limits on their ability to trade their crops, particularly if the current WTO and WIPO talks "succeed" in harmonising global patent law.
Do what you can.
Thanks to my Mum for reminding me about this.
[Add a comment]
# I thought the
birdhouse spam was kind of strange, but this might just top it.
From: XXXXXX@aol.com
Date sent: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 01:15:07 EST
Subject: Request
To: jez@jezuk.demon.co.uk
Dear Jez Higgins
Hello there. I hope that you have been having a great time so far
this year. I hope that it will continue to be a great year for you. I
have recently started into the wonderful and exciting hobby of
collecting celebrity personalities signatures and memorabilia items. I
was wondering, if there would be any way possible if I could add your
name to my collection that I am starting? I would be honored if you
could send me a personally signed photograph of yourself and if
possible a signed business card, or index card? I would very much
appreciative it if you could do this for me.
...
[Add a comment]
#Goodbye Big Phone Bill (I Hope)
After a gentle prompting from Nat ("Last month's phone bill was £240! What are you going to do about it?") I finally got Telewest to set me up on their £10/month
SurfUnlimited deal. From me ringing them, to actually dialling and getting it going took under 20 minutes, if you don't count the 5 months before that.
I get my phones from Telewest, and sometime in June they sent me a letter saying "Hey Jez! Why not signup for our all-you-eat-for-a-tenner Internet deal?" I've been using Demon for years, but since I started working at home the phone bills were starting to sting a bit so I said yes. And waited. And waited.
They sent me another letter saying "Erm, sorry. It's been a bit busy and we've had to buy a whole load of new stuff. Be with you by August 15th." I waited. And waited.
Mid-September I give them a call and asked what was going on. "Let me check" says customer service bloke. "It was sent out on the 21st of August. I'll send you another." I waited.
Yesterday, I ring them again. "OK, we'll sort it out now. Here's your username, ring the tech support chaps and they'll talk you through setting it all up." And they did. Amazing. All I'm hoping for now is that they get the bill right next month.
[Add a comment]
